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Fairchild Patent Notebooks

The Fairchild Semiconductor patent and laboratory notebooks date from before the dawn of the integrated circuit. The work contained in the notebooks revolutionized the science and manufacturing of microelectronics and drove the explosive growth of the region we now know as Silicon Valley. Fairchild was founded by Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Jean Hoerni, Julius Blank, Eugene Kleiner, Victor Grinich, Jay Last, and Sheldon Roberts. The history-making contributions of these entrepreneurs included inventing the modern semiconductor manufacturing technology (the planar process); building the first practical integrated circuits; the invention of the low power technology CMOS that enables every portable digital device today; and pioneering the development of semiconductor memory. All of these breakthroughs and many others critical to our modern technological society grew from ideas documented in these notebooks spanning 1957 through the 1980s.

Thanks to Texas Instruments, which donated the Notebooks in 2012, the Computer History Museum is excited to continue preserving the heritage of
Fairchild Semiconductor and its extraordinary founders. CHM encourages monetary donations to continue their work preserving and providing access to the Fairchild Notebooks.